Maybe the Moon

billing.”
    He laughed. “OK. Roth and Riccarton.”
    I rolled it around for a while, testing the rhythm of the words. “No, you’re right. Works better the other way.”
    He stroked my hair. “I know a guy with a club just around the corner. He might not book us right away, but we’d steal the show on Open Mike Night. After that, who knows?”
    “Well…it’s a start.”
    He frowned. “Hate it, huh?”
    “No. Sounds good.” Not as good as an evening with Meryl and Bette and Barbra and Madonna, but I was trying like hell to lower my sights for once. I have to do that, I realize, if I’m to survive in this town at all. All things considered, an Open Mike Night in North Hollywood sounded preferable to, say, phone solicitations in Reseda or another idiotic infomercial where you can’t see my face. I’d sunk lower than this, after all, and still managed to hold up my head about it.
    Neil got out of bed, lit a cigarette, returned to stretch out and stare at the ceiling. “We need a classy look,” he said, warming tohis subject. “I’ll get a tuxedo, maybe, with a bow tie the same color as your dress.”
    “That’d be nice.”
    “You can sit in one of those tall stools with a back. With a pin spot.”
    I told him I sounded better standing up.
    “OK, then, we build a little box, like a pedestal. I can roll it out with me before you make your entrance. It would announce you, sort of—like a trademark.”
    “Can we put steps on it?”
    “Sure.”
    “It’s better if you don’t have to lift me. People aren’t as nervous.”
    “No kidding?” He acted as if he’d never thought of that before.
    “Absolutely,” I said.
    “OK.”
    “The pedestal’s nice, though. I like that.”
    “I thought you might.”
    I smiled, but warily. “Are you sure about this?”
    “Completely. Never surer.” He touched my cheek. “Can you spend the night?”
    I told him I’d planned on it.
    “Good.”
    “We can do this, Neil, but I don’t want a Svengali.”
    “I know that.”
    “I’m my own Svengali.”
    “Hey,” he said, “I’m just the piano player.”
    “We aren’t gonna sing duets?”
    “If you want,” he said, laughing.
    “Duets would be nice, I think.”
    “Then we’ll do them. As many as you want.”
    I told him not to be so easy, that I’d take advantage of it.
    “I’m just glad you’re staying,” he said.
    He made a nice dinner for us—beef stew and garlic bread and salad—while the rain kept pounding away. I watched TV from thebed, comforted by the circling smells of the stew, the muffled clatter and clink of his movement in the kitchen. The tube, meanwhile, was full of the Thomas hearings, recap after recap of the weirdest day of testimony yet.
    “I am not believing this!”
    Neil arrived from the kitchen wearing a white butcher’s apron and holding a soup spoon like a scepter. “What now?”
    “He told her he has a dick like Long Dong Silver!”
    “Who’s that?”
    “This porn dude.”
    “You’ve heard of him?”
    “I’ve seen him. My friend Jeff showed me a photo once years ago in a magazine. He’s got this long, skinny shlong that hangs down to his knees. It looks like a piece of garden hose or some-thing—a really useless piece of garden hose. It was tied in a knot when I saw it.”
    Neil grinned. “You’re shittin’ me.”
    “No, sir. And if we’re having this conversation, they must be having it at the networks.”
    Neil chuckled.
    “They’ve got that photo as we speak, and they’re racking their conscience, wondering if this is something America really needs to know. I say show it. Show the world exactly what a pig Clarence Thomas is.”
    “How can you be so sure she’s not lying?”
    “Why should she, Neil? Why should she sit there and say the words Long Dong Silver?”
    “Because he jilted her.”
    “ Jilted her?”
    “Well, rebuffed her. She was obviously hot for him once.”
    “Oh, please.” I threw up my hands.
    “Plus he married a white woman.”
    “Oh, now, there’s a good reason to get him.”
    “It is to some black women. It’s the worst crime you can commit.”
    “Look at her,” I said, gesturing toward that strong, cool, dignified face on the screen. “Does she look like a racist to you? She taught civil rights law, for God’s sake!”
    “At Oral Roberts University.”
    “Well…”
    “That’s not a credential I’d brag about. That’s like…teaching ecology at Exxon.”
    I absorbed that for a moment, then gave him a